


good for nothing

by sunbrights



Category: Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: Birthday Fluff, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-16
Updated: 2017-08-16
Packaged: 2018-12-16 07:15:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11823807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunbrights/pseuds/sunbrights
Summary: To be yakuza is to adhere to the yakuza way of life: justice, duty, and the spirit of chivalry. That's what he believes.





	good for nothing

August swelters. It’s like a tarp laid out over the city, trapping in damp air left over from the rains until it cooks. Even after dark, the temperature hasn’t tapered off; his undershirt is already sticking to a patch of sweat at the small of his back, and he hasn’t been out of the car more than a couple minutes. 

To his left, Niijima lights a cigarette. To his right, Hirabayashi grunts.

Niijima flips his lighter back into his pocket. “You got a problem?”

“It’s already too fuckin’ hot, you don’t gotta make it worse.”

“It’s a lighter, don’t be a pussy.”

“I’m just _saying._ ”

Fuyuhiko picks at the front of his dress shirt. Anything to get some goddamn airflow. “Will you two idiots shut the fuck up?”

This side street is hot on its own, lined with street vendors and their open-air grills. It’s not as busy as it could be, most people opting for something cooler to snack on or staying in entirely, but the lines still snake around the edges of the stalls. Most of them are other teenagers on summer break, fanning each other with their fingers.

A few of the line cooks meet his eye when he passes. All of them drop their gazes back down right after.

Niijima points with his chin. “There.”

It’s a skinny building near the end of the row, flanked by an alleyway on one side. The first floor is a hole-in-the-wall type place for authentic gua bao; the second floor is an apartment for the owners. It’s kinda grubby-looking, but it’s not bad. It gets good reviews online.

Niijima hangs his cigarette between his lips when he reaches for the door handle. “Hey,” Fuyuhiko barks. “Put that shit out.”

“Aw, c’mon, I just lit it—”

“You think I give a shit? They’ve got a kitchen in there, nobody wants your ash in their fuckin’ food. Fuck up your lungs on your own time.” 

Niijima sighs, but flicks the cigarette to the ground between his feet. He crushes the glowing butt of it beneath his heel, and then steps forward to swing the door open. A bell over the frame rings cheerfully to announce them.

There’s a kid mopping behind the counter. He’s older than Fuyuhiko, but not by much; maybe sixteen or seventeen. (Sixteen isn’t older anymore, his brain reminds him, not unless he's counting by weeks or months.) He points a customer-service smile at the floor.

“Sorry, folks! We’re closing up early tonight. If you come back tomorrow, we—” He stands up straight to look at them, and the smile falls off his face. “... Oh.” 

Niijima’s stare is level. “Yo.”

The kid recovers, sort of. His mouth stretches again, but it can’t be called a smile anymore. “Good evening, Niijima-san,” he says, strained. “We- My father wasn’t expecting you tonight.”

“That’s because I didn’t tell him we were coming,” Niijima says.

“Oh.”

The kid wrings the neck of his mop. He’s not stupid; he must know Niijima is small-time, because he makes eye contact with Fuyuhiko before his gaze drops to the floor. 

“You brought a guest,” he says.

“Just bring your dad out here, kid. We ain’t here to see you.”

“He’ll want to know who’s asking.”

Ballsy, for a kid who can’t pick his eyes up out of the dirt. Niijima’s not stupid enough to talk over him, so Fuyuhiko looks at the cheap prints on the walls and lets the silence sink in.

“Kuzuryuu,” he says, and watches the sharp edges of his family name do what his face couldn't. What's left of the color in the kid's face drains away. “Fuyuhiko. That good enough to get me an audience?”

“Yeah,” the kid says meekly. “Of- Of course. I’ll get him. Please wait here.”

The kid leaves his mop and scurries into the back, the silver staff door swinging behind him. The place isn’t big; it only takes a minute or two for it to swing back open, this time with the kid in back and his father in front.

Huang is tall, skinny, and nervous. His face is heavily lined, and his hair is streaked with grey; too much, for a guy his age, even though rumor is he brought most of the stress on himself. He scans from Niijima to Hirabayashi, and then his eyes drop conspicuously down from somewhere above Fuyuhiko’s head.

“You got something you want to say?” Fuyuhiko demands. “Go on. Make my fuckin’ day.”

Huang’s eyes are dinner plates. “No!” he stammers. He clears his throat. “No, no. Just- welcome. It's an honor to have a member of Kuzuryuu-san’s family here with us today.”

His Japanese is accented, but fluent. He makes a vague gesture to the counter, where everything's already been picked clean and put away. 

“Can I get you something to eat?” he asks. Behind him, the kid freezes, already halfway through closing up shop. “That is... We’ve closed the kitchen for the night, but I’m sure we could make an exception for—”

“I’m not hungry,” Fuyuhiko answers.

It’s not true. He skipped out on most of an elaborate kaiseki dinner to be here; halfway through the second course, his old man had looked at him meaningfully from across the table, and that had been that. He’s not sorry to miss it, all the choking circumstance, but the smell of seared pork wafting up from where the kid is scraping down the grill still stings his mostly-empty stomach.

“I see,” Huang says. “Business, then.” He pushes the staff door open with his palm and holds it for the three of them to come through behind him. “Please, we can talk out back.”

The back is even skinnier than the front. The staircase to the second floor takes up half the hallway on its own, leaving just enough room to walk one at a time, straight back. There’s a door on the opposite wall that Fuyuhiko assumes leads out into the alley.

There is a tall, stout woman at the bottom of the staircase. She sizes him up when he steps in, her stare hopping from his shoes to his cufflinks to his sweaty collar. She hisses at her husband in what takes Fuyuhiko a few seconds to realize is dialectal Mandarin.

He’s rusty. She talks fast, and he doesn’t practice as often as he should. By the time his brain parses her first sentence she’s already halfway through the second, so he only gets the gist of it: she’s asking about him, and whether or not he’s going to do something.

“Go back upstairs,” Huang answers in kind, under his breath.

The woman doesn’t go anywhere. She shoots Fuyuhiko a glare over her husband’s shoulder. “A little boy?” she complains, and _that_ he understands, plain as day. “If this is who they sent, no wonder they can’t hold up their end.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Fuyuhiko spits at her. She only stares back at him, derisive and uncomprehending.

Huang flinches, then simpers, one hand stretched toward the back door. “I’m sorry, my wife is still learning Japanese. If you—”

“‘They can’t hold up their end,’” Fuyuhiko repeats in Mandarin. The woman’s eyes go wide. “What the fuck does that mean?”

“I don’t understand any of this shit,” Hirabayashi grumbles behind him.

Huang scrambles to keep hold of the conversation. His eyes keep darting to the alley door, like that’s the one thing that’ll save him. “It’s not anything you need to worry yourself with,” he says. “Please. My wife has a limited understanding of our terms, she isn’t—”

She’s hiding something, is what she’s doing. She stands at the bottom of the stairs with her legs apart and her arms crossed, like she’s any kind of barrier at all.

Fuyuhiko turns the sharp corner at the end of the hallway, and ducks around her to climb the staircase.

“You can’t go up there!” she shrieks after him. When that doesn’t stop him, she shrieks at her husband instead, “You can’t let him go up there!”

“We own this whole fucking building, lady!” Fuyuhiko shouts back. He’s not conversant enough in any dialect of Chinese to be able to translate that while still preserving the tone, and he also doesn’t care, so he doesn’t bother trying. “I’ll go wherever the hell I want!” 

She gets the message anyway. She stomps up the staircase after him, and seizes the back of his jacket with desperate, clawing nails. When he turns on her, ready to fling her off, all the harsh bravado is gone from her face. Her eyes shine with panicked tears.

“ _Stop,_ ” she begs, in stilted Japanese.

The window at the top of the stairs is broken. It’s covered by flimsy plastic and masking tape, and hangs loose in the stagnant summer air. 

On the floor above him, a child begins to cry.

He looks down over the railing, where Huang is staring up at them, frozen and pale. The woman lets him go and turns her face away, both hands pressed over her mouth. To her credit, she doesn’t let her tears spill over.

“You wanna explain to me what the fuck is going on?” Fuyuhiko asks, when Huang seems at a loss for words.

“There was a break-in,” he answers, breath short. “Two days ago. They hit my son. Threatened to take my daughter. I- I still have the money I saved to pay you! I keep it in a separate safe. But they took everything else. I know this area can be- can be _rough,_ but the Kuzuryuu Clan has always—”

“You ain’t paid in six months,” Hirabayashi interrupts. “We don’t owe you shit.”

“I know,” Huang says. “I understand. Your family runs a business, not a charity. I wouldn’t allow my customers to eat without paying, and I wouldn’t expect you to act any differently. I’ll give you what I have, I will.” He’s wringing his hands. His voice is shaking. “But- please. My wife, my children… They have nothing to do with this. _Please._ ” 

Fuyuhiko realizes how it looks, him halfway up the stairs to where a little girl is screaming her lungs out, and the mother struggling not to cry on the step below him. Niijima and Hirabayashi both look up at him for a cue.

“Stay here,” Fuyuhiko tells them, clattering his way back down. He hugs the railing to keep from upsetting the woman’s balance.

They look at each other. Niijima fidgets. “Sir—”

“I _said_ stay _here,_ ” he snaps. “Watch these idiots for an hour. Make sure they don’t leave. You think you can manage that, or are you gonna fuck this up, too?”

“No, sir.”

“No, you can’t manage it?”

“No.” Hirabayashi fumbles. “No, we, uh, we won’t fuck it up, sir.”

“Tch. That’s a real vote of fuckin’ confidence.” 

He fights his way back through the narrow hallway and out through the front door, where the air is thick and savory-sweet. He can feel the kid watching him through the shop’s broad front window.

“Yo, Peko,” he says to the street corner. “We’re leaving.”

She melts out of the shadowed alleyway into the dim yellow glow of the outside security light. She looks unarmed. He knows she isn’t. “Yes, young master,” she says. “Huang has settled his debt?” 

“I got something I need to do first. Niijima and Hirabayashi are keeping an eye on them so they don’t skip town. You’re with me.”

She looks at the door of the little restaurant, and then back at him. He waits for her objection, the one he's sure just jumped into her brain, but all she says is, “Where to first?”

*

They don’t have to go far. The cook at the stall across the street gives him a description, and the bouncer at the bar on the corner gives him a name and a hangout. Ten minutes and a train ride leads them to a gaggle of punks dressed in eye-searing sweatsuits, loitering around a tiny wedge of a city park. 

They outnumber him and Peko three to one, which shakes down to odds Fuyuhiko is comfortable with.

Their skinny leader— Itou Takeshi, according to the bouncer— rolls up to his feet, hands deep in his leopard-print pockets. “Yo,” he laughs, loud enough for his crew to lift their heads. “Somebody here got a playdate?”

The rest of them laugh too, on cue, like plants in a comedy club audience paid to react at the right times. Some of them don’t even look like they’re paying attention.

Fuyuhiko grits his teeth and projects his voice. “We got business with you, bastard,” he says. “And believe me, you’re not gonna be laughing at the end of it. So spare us the fuckin’ comedy.”

Itou sputters with aggressive laughter. “Whoa- _shit!_ Look at the potty-mouth on this pipsqueak!” He lifts his eyes past Fuyuhiko’s shoulder, his chin tilted back. “You can do better than this, babe. Whaddaya say, wanna take a ride with us instead?”

Peko doesn’t say anything. She stares him down; Fuyuhiko can feel the intensity of her glare without needing to see her face.

Itou folds his grin into a scowl, but not before his adam’s apple bobs nervously in his throat. “You should train your bitch to bark,” he spits. Literally, his head cocked to the side to send it flying toward the bushes. “But we ain’t got beef with you. So back off.”

Fuyuhiko leans over to get a better look at the guys behind him. One of them is on his phone. Another is preoccupied playing with a lighter.

“Yo,” he calls. “How many of you dumbasses knew this guy was having you steal from the Kuzuryuu Clan?”

That gets their attention. It always does. 

The answer is zero, from the looks on their faces.

“Holy shit,” Itou says, before any of them can summon the courage to answer. He slaps his knees with both palms. “Is this about the gua bao shithole? Seriously? They send a kid after me over a coupla foreigners? You gotta be fuckin’ kidding me. It’s like yakuza for elementary schoolers.”

He cackles at his own shitty joke, but behind him, his lackeys exchange nervous glances.

“Uh, hey,” one of them says. “You didn’t say nothin’ about that being yakuza territory, man. I’m not trying to get mixed up with that kinda shit—”

Itou glares over his shoulder. “What the fuck are you so afraid of? Some toddler and his four-eyed babysitter? If the Kuzuryuus weren’t shit, we wouldn’t have gotten in there in the first place.”

The guy goes pale. “ _Dude._ ”

“You better start listening to your little cheer squad, motherfucker,” Fuyuhiko tells him. “Quit talking out your ass and maybe you walk away from this with all your fuckin’ fingers. _Maybe._ ”

Itou looks at him. He says, “You know what?” and then he sucker punches him, right in the jaw. 

It wins Itou the crowd back, for a second. His crew lights up with whoops and laughter, their fear evaporating in the heat. Then Fuyuhiko swings his momentum back up, and clocks Itou straight across the face with the edge of his elbow.

The rest of them surge to their feet. It’s the requisite show of solidarity, but none of them are brave enough to be the first one to actually jump into the fray. They hover, fists clenched, all talk and no shit.

Itou swings wildly on his own, first throwing too-wide punches, then trying to make a messy grab at the front of Fuyuhiko’s jacket. Fuyuhiko ducks under his arm and out to the side, and Peko charges forward to fill the space. She slams her shoulder beneath Itou’s sternum, flips him up over her back, and drops him down onto the concrete with a sick crunch of bone.

The other five stop short, jaws swinging. One of them bolts right then and there, just turns tail and runs straight for the opposite fence.

“Holy _shit._ ”

“Did you see that?!”

“That bitch dropped Itou like he was nothing! This is what I’m fucking talking about, man!”

Peko isn’t paying attention to them. She drops to pin Itou to the ground, her knee between his shoulderblades. He bucks and writhes and wriggles, but she doesn’t even look like she’s straining to keep her balance. She might as well be kneeling at a tea ceremony.

“Bitch!” Itou snarls, scrabbling against the dirt. There’s a smear of blood on his face. His nose is probably broken. “Get the fuck off of me! Fucking crazy— fucking _bitch!_ ”

Fuyuhiko lifts his head to stare down the row of punks still left. “You got five seconds to decide,” he tells them. “Are you with this asshole or not?”

It doesn’t even take them three. They scramble, grabbing at each other’s sleeves. “Let’s go, man. Come on, let’s fucking go! Let’s go!”

“Don’t leave me here!” Itou screams. “Cowards! Don’t run!” His voice cracks with panic. “They’re gonna fucking kill me!”

“Shut the fuck up,” Fuyuhiko says. He scans the perimeter of the park. “We’re not gonna kill you. You seriously think we’ve got that kinda time to waste on you?”

There. Somebody grabbed a cop, in the commotion. He’s hovering at the front gate of the park, one hand on the hinge and the other on his belt. Fuyuhiko makes eye contact; the cop tips his head down, and moves on.

“Apologize,” Peko says.

“Fuck you!”

She drags Itou back by the hair, and digs the edge of her knee into his spine. “ _Apologize._ ”

His tune turns on its head. “I’m sorry!” he gasps. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I hadn’t seen your people around there for weeks, I- I thought you moved on, or whatever! I didn’t know, I swear!”

“You swearing doesn’t count for shit,” Fuyuhiko snaps. “You think that’s gonna make up our damages?”

Itou groans, chest heaving. “I don’t have the money anymore, okay? I spent it. It wasn’t even that _much._ ”

Fuyuhiko squats to bring them almost eye-to-eye. “I said, shut the _fuck_ up,” he tells him. “You’re listening now, understand? Here’s the deal I’m offering you: you leave, right now, and I never have to look at your ugly fuckin’ mug again. You’re done making _assumptions_ about our territory. If any one of us catches you sniffing around _anywhere_ again, you’re done.“ He leans forward. Peko leans her weight down. “You can take that, or you can be a dead man. Which is it gonna be?”

“Alright! Okay! Whatever! I’ll back off, I promise!” Itou is almost sobbing. There are tracks in the dried blood on his face. “Just get this crazy bitch off of me, _please._ She’s gonna crack a rib or something, man, I’m serious!”

“Call her that one more time and I’ll fucking gut you myself, bastard.”

Itou drops his face into the dirt. He groans something that sounds like another apology.

“For fuck’s sake.” Fuyuhiko swipes sweat away from his forehead with his sleeve and straightens back up to standing. “Let him up, Peko. I’m sick of listening to his whining.”

She does. As soon as she lifts her knee, Itou twists away from her and staggers to his feet. He stands there, eyes wide and breathing hard, his arms wrapped around his ribs.

“What are you waiting around for?” Fuyuhiko demands. “I said I never wanted to see your fuckin’ face again.” Itou fumbles for words. Fuyuhiko rolls his eyes. “Get _lost._ ”

Itou trips on a trash can in his hurry to comply. It leaves the park empty except for the two of them; it’s late enough that even the cicadas aren’t making a racket, anymore.

“Are you alright?” Peko asks.

He grinds the heel of his hand into his temple. There’s a headache unfurling there already, a combination of the ringing in his jaw, his empty stomach, and the weight of the heat. “Yeah, fine,” he answers. “Fucker’s got a piece of shit right hook.”

She frowns at him.

“What?”

She touches the right corner of her mouth. He copies her, and his fingers come away bloody. “God _dammit._ ” His lip is split at the edge. Probably from one of Itou’s shitty plastic rings. “Fucking prick.”

“I'm sorry,” she says. “I should have realized he would escalate the situation.”

He can feel it now that she's brought it to his attention, a throb of pain as adrenaline drains away. “What’re you apologizing for?” he grumbles, digging in his pocket for a handkerchief. “Not like it's your fault. Bastard knew he couldn't take us fair and square.” He spits blood out onto the concrete. “Ugh. Fuckin’ gross. Sorry.”

She doesn't react. It's not like he thinks she's squeamish, or anything, it's just that it's not something you _do,_ especially in front of a girl. She finds a water fountain to wet the handkerchief in and brings it back to him, slightly damp.

He wishes he could just wrap the whole thing around the back of his neck and leave it there, but he can’t go wandering around the subway with a bloody face. He dabs at the cut until the fabric stops coming away red and starts coming away pink. 

“How’s it look?” he asks her.

He’d just meant for her to tell him if he still had blood smeared on his face, but she leans in close to properly inspect it, expression serious. Staring at her this close feels awkward, so he drops his eyes, but that’s not any better. Sweat shines on her clavicle. He holds his breath.

“Cut it out,” he mumbles. “It’s not that big a deal.”

“It looked worse than it is,” she agrees, straightening back up. He tugs at the knot of his tie.

“C’mon, we gotta get back,” he says. He shakes his sleeve back to check his watch. It’s after ten. “I told Niijima and Hirabayashi an hour. Who knows what they’ll fuck up if we give ‘em more than that.”

“Yes, young master.”

She follows him back to the train station. The platform is mostly empty; it’s just the two of them and a handful of others waiting. She stands while he sits, the sharp edge of her stare discouraging anyone else from taking the seat at the opposite end of his bench. 

They have a couple minutes to burn before the next train comes. They spend most of it in comfortable silence, until she says: “... May I ask a question?”

He glances at her. She’s staring into the oncoming tunnel, the support of the bench’s overhang pressed between her shoulders. “You don’t need permission,” he tells her. “Just… ask.”

Her chin dips down toward her chest. She’s quiet for so long he thinks maybe she decided against it, but then she turns her head toward him. Not enough to be looking at him, but more than she usually does when she’s being this direct. Usually she can’t get herself to do both.

“Why did we come here?” she asks.

“What, you mean to get Itou?”

“Yes.”

He expected to get the question eventually. Not from her, necessarily, but maybe from Niijima, and definitely from his old man. He stretches his legs out in front of him. The subway platform is grimy, dirt beaten into the grout between the tile.

“Well,” he says, “why shouldn’t we have?”

“Huang has never paid for protection. His debt concerns a business loan, and he hasn't been paying that, either.”

“You don’t think I know that?”

He’s being an asshole and he knows it; he asked a question and she answered it, that’s all. She doesn’t point it out.

“Just… It’s not about that,” he tries again. He wipes sweat from the back of his neck. It’s hot down here too, somehow, but grittier, and drier. It’s almost worse than the damp heat outside. “Huang’s an honest man. Punks like Itou, swooping in, fucking things up just because they can…” His fingers curl into a fist when he goes to wipe them on his knee. “It pisses me off. Who else is gonna do anything about it, if not us? The code doesn’t count for anything if we let shit like this slide.”

Peko doesn’t answer, but she’s looking at him, now, calm gaze on the side of his face. Headlights flood the dark tunnel ahead, and the train rattles up to the platform. 

“C’mon,” he says, pushing himself to his feet. “One more stop.”

*

The bustle of the side street is starting to die down. A lot of the stalls are already closed, and the ones that aren’t are trying to hurry their last few customers along. Huang’s little gua bao shop is one of the only ones that’s still lit up everywhere, from the security light out front to the dining room to the apartment above.

Niijima is outside smoking. 

“I’m watching the front,” he says, by way of an excuse. “Hirabayashi’s in there making sure they don’t sneak out the back. Not like they were going anywhere, though. Startin’ to think he was telling the truth when he said he wasn’t gonna skip town.”

“Whatever,” Fuyuhiko says. “Stay here. It’ll only take a second.”

“You got it.”

Peko follows him inside, this time. The rest of them are in the dining room, sat around the same rectangular table. Hirabayashi has his phone out, his feet propped on one of the other chairs. The kid has his sister in his lap. She’s got her face half-smashed against his shoulder, fast asleep.

There’s a pile of cash at the center of the table. When the bell rings over the door, Hirabayashi drops his feet and leans forward to scoop it up.

“Yo,” he says. “Welcome back.”

Huang and his wife look at each other. “We- We brought out the money we’d had saved to make a payment,” he says. Hirabayashi lifts the stack in his palm, in case it wasn’t already obvious. “It’s… It isn’t everything I owe, but we were hoping that maybe....”

“How much is it?” Fuyuhiko asks.

Huang hesitates. “Covers about half,” Hirabayashi answers for him. “I counted it a couple times.”

Fuyuhiko sinks both hands into his pockets. “Alright,” he says. “I got it from here. Take Niijima and go.”

Hirabayashi blinks at him. “Uh, what?”

“What? You having trouble with Japanese now too?”

“No. I mean- no, sir, but…” He shifts uncomfortably in his seat. “I mean, are you sure?”

“Do I sound not fuckin’ sure to you? I’ve been out here long enough, the last thing I wanna do is waste more time arguing this shit with you.” Fuyuhiko makes a wide gesture at the door. “ _Go._ ”

Hirabayashi drops the stack of bills back on the table, shoves up from his seat, and lumbers out of the room without another word. Niijima leans in to peer through the window when Hirabayashi delivers the instructions, but he’s been around longer. He knows not to argue.

It’s just him and Peko at the door, now. The rest of the dining room sits in silence, all of them with their eyes low. The kid cups his hand around the back of his sister’s head.

Huang’s wife is the first one to move. She snatches up the money from the table and shuffles forward, expression like stone. Her eyes are dry now, if puffy around the edges. She shoves the stack of bills toward him with both hands.

Fuyuhiko looks at it, then at Huang. “Tell her to get that shit out of my face before I burn this whole fuckin’ place down myself.”

What Huang actually tells her is something more like, “Hold onto it, we need to be careful not to upset him,” but it gets the job done. She pulls her hands back into her chest, the wad of bills pressed under her chin.

“You’re lucky,” he tells them. He fishes his wallet out of his back pocket, and snaps it open. “The bastard who roughed this place up decided he’d had a change of heart. Wanted to make a charitable donation.”

His parents gave him cash for his birthday. (“You’re not a child anymore,” his old man had told him. “Don’t be stupid with it.”) So did his uncle, and three of his second-cousins trying to buy their way into an invite to next year’s celebration. He counts it out by the ten-thousand while they watch.

He can feel Peko’s eyes on the back of his head.

“That’s all the delinquent payments,” he says, dropping bills onto the table. “There’s interest. This—” He waves what’s left of the stack at them. It’s slim, but not insubstantial. “That covers you for the next three months.”

Huang looks dumbstruck. His wife glances between them, her brow knit in confusion. “What is it?” she asks. “What did he say?”

Fuyuhiko scoops his own money back into his wallet. “I said we’re even,” he tells her in Mandarin.

Huang’s throat unsticks. “Thank you,” he manages. “I- I... Thank you. You have no idea what this—”

“Don’t get it wrong,” Fuyuhiko snaps. “You got _lucky._ If I came back and all I had waiting for me was that,” he points at the lonely stack of bills still wound up in the wife’s shaky hands, “we’d be having a different fuckin’ conversation.”

“Yes,” Huang says, breathless. “Yes, of course.”

“You’re out of chances. Don’t fuck this one up.”

“I understand.” He reaches for his wife’s elbow, who’s still standing in the same spot, the money clutched to her chest. “We- _We_ understand. It won’t go to waste, I promise you.”

“Then that’s it. We’re done here.” Huang exhales, shaky. The kid buries his nose in his sister’s wispy hair. Fuyuhiko tips his head back. “Let’s go, Peko.”

She follows him out the door. 

She doesn’t say anything about it, the money or the family or how Itou definitely didn’t “donate” shit. She walks behind him in silence, all the way back up to the cross-street. 

There’s just enough time left for them to take the train back, instead of calling another car to come get them. It’ll take longer, but at least it’s less annoying that way. They just have to change once, and then—

His stomach groans, loud enough that a girl waiting at the crosswalk a few feet away looks at him, startled.

“Shit,” he mutters, digging his nails into his middle. “I missed all of dinner, huh…”

“Would you like to stop somewhere to eat?” Peko asks.

“Well... yeah, but…” He digs both hands into his pockets. He doesn’t know what he expects to find; all his cash is spoken for, and any amount he doesn’t come back with tonight falls on Huang and his family to pay. Maybe they wouldn’t care about a beef bowl’s worth of difference, but he does.

“It’s fine,” he says. “I’m not gonna starve. Let’s just go back.”

He starts off down the sidewalk, but she doesn't immediately follow him. “Hey,” he says, stopping short. “You coming or what?”

She’s looking at her feet. “It will take time to get back to the house,” she says. The noise of the street almost drowns her out. “So… If you're hungry now, then…” 

“I don’t have the cash for it, though,” he tells her. He thought that was obvious, but maybe he’d been a better actor than he was giving himself credit for. “So, it’s fine. Don’t worry about it, let’s just go back.”

Peko hesitates, head still low. She reaches into the breast pocket of her blouse, and pulls out a neatly-folded stack of bills.

He feels himself gape. He can’t help it. “What the hell? What’re you carrying around that much spending money for?”

“Sometimes the kitchen and maid staff have extra chores to be done,” she explains, even though _how_ is definitely not what he asked. “I made a temporary agreement with some of them that if I were able to help more often than normal, they’d give me a portion of their wages as compensation.”

It’s not like it’s a lot, a couple thousand at most, but for her the amount doesn’t matter. His parents would flip their shit if they knew she was earning money on her own, regardless of how she did it or how meager it was.

“I’m sorry,” she says. The words almost trip over each other on their way out of her mouth. “I know it’s against the rules of the household. I can return the money to its rightful owners—”

“Don’t be stupid,” he says, and he’s still too surprised to even put any anger behind it. “I don’t give a shit about that. I just… Do you…” His brain’s addled from the heat. He can’t figure out the right way to word it that doesn’t make him sound like a jerk. “Are you saving up for something?”

Her birthday was less than two months ago. What kind of asshole is he that the one time she actually _wants_ something, he can’t figure out what it is?

Peko looks at the bills in her hands. She clutches at them, nails pinching folds in the paper. “No,” she answers. “There wasn’t anything I needed for myself.”

“What? Then why—”

There’s a news ticker on the building behind her. The date and time scroll lazily by in bright red characters, like the building itself is scolding him for being too stupid to figure it out on his own.

FRI 16 AUG 23:18

Oh.

_Oh._

“Jeez, Peko,” he says. “You- You didn’t have to do something like that. It’s— I mean—”

Peko clutches the bills in her fist, and bows low. “I understand,” she says. “My agreements with the other staff have already terminated. I’ll return the money before breakfast tomorrow morning. My only request is that they not be punished for my behavior, only me.”

“That’s not what I’m saying! Dammit, would you just...“ His face is hot, even in the fucking heat. He scrubs at his neck. “Let’s- Let’s just go somewhere. Is that okay?” 

She lifts her head to look at him, finally, eyes wide. She doesn’t say anything.

“Look. Let’s go there, on the corner.” It’s a late night beef bowl place, with a thin ring of a crowd around the entrance. She looks at it, then looks back at him, and still doesn’t answer.

“I mean, how much you got?” he presses. “It’s enough for the both of us, right?”

She looks down at the bills again. “I-It’s fine,” she says. “Even if not, I don’t need to—”

“If we’re doing this, you’re eating too, understand? I’m not gonna sit there while you watch me stuff my face.”

She fans the bills out with her thumb. “Yes,” she answers, voice small. “It’s enough for both of us.”

“Okay, then,” he says.

It’s a nasty, grimy place, half full of drunks and half of people getting off late work shifts. It’s even hotter than it is outside, with so many people crammed into such a small space. They have to wedge themselves into two seats at the end of the counter, and the sweaty, beleaguered employee flings their orders at them as soon as they're ready.

Steam rises off the top of the bowl in a delicious, salty cloud. He wants to just dig into the whole thing, but putting his face over the bowl pushes him over the edge of too much: the humidity outside and the sweaty proximity in here and the boiling broth. It’s _too fucking hot._

“Hang on,” he says. He swings his arms up so that he doesn’t elbow her in the close quarters. “I’m officially over this fucking heat. I gotta—”

He peels his jacket off and flings it over the back of the chair. He has to fight with the buttons of his cuffs to get them undone, but being able to roll his sleeves up even just to his elbows is a fucking game changer.

Finally, after hours and hours, he can _eat._

Salt and still-hot broth sting his lip where it’s split. He powers through it anyway because he has to; once he takes the first bite, he can’t stop. He demolishes half the bowl in less than a minute, and stops only to chug the glass of water at the edge of his tray.

Peko is watching him. She hasn’t even touched hers yet, still stirring egg into her broth. “Do you feel better?” she asks.

“Shit, yeah,” he says. He grips the edge of the table so that he can lean back without toppling off the stool. “Forget what I said before, I was definitely going to starve. This is exactly what I needed.”

The red glow of the shop’s electric sign makes her cheeks look pink. “I see,” she says. She ducks her head. “Then… that’s good.” 

It’s not at all like the expensive, curated dinner his parents had arranged for him. It’s messy, the other people around the counter are rowdy and loud, and he sweats straight through his dress shirt by the time it’s over. Peko’s not immune to it, either; sweat clings to the hair at the back of her neck, and gleams on her skin when the dim overhead lights hit it the right way. She keeps having to lean forward to hear him, and he keeps having to lean forward to hear her.

It’s not like his parents’ dinner because it’s better. No amount of perfectly-plated mini courses could ever even come close.

They step out onto the sidewalk when they’re finished. He doesn’t bother rolling his sleeves back down; it’s late, and too hot. He slings his jacket over his left shoulder and lets himself be done with it. 

The trains have stopped running. He needs to call a car to come pick them up, which is fine, that’s the point of having them, but his thumb hesitates on the screen of his phone anyway.

“Hey. Peko.”

She looks over at him.

“Thanks. For, you know. For this.” He tilts his head back towards the shop door behind him. “Today wasn’t bad. I mean, it was a lot, I guess. But… it was still pretty good. You know what I mean?”

She doesn’t smile, but she almost does. She comes right up to the edge of one, eyes bright and content. He’s learned to recognize the warning signs. “Yes,” she answers. “Happy birthday.”

It is.

He dials.


End file.
